hello and welcome. i am phil torres here to talk about innovation that his can change lives, we'll explore the innovation of hardware and doing it in a unique way. this is a show about science by scientist. let's check out our team of hardcore in other words, christ is a molecular neuroscientist. tonight science and cigarettes. they are the new rage. the smokeless smoke. what's the truth about e cigarettes? we'll investigate. marita davison is a biologist. tonight inside the food lab. we have the crazy of the looking innovation that his will your palate to the test. lindsay moran is an ex-cia operative.

i am phil torres. tonight a heart in a box. that could one day revolutionize medicine. that's our team, now let's do some science. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> hi guys, welcome back to "tech know." i am phil torres and i am here with lindsey, marita and crystal. crystal, for your piece, i recently read a report by the cdc that said the amount of electronic cigarettes that middle schoolers and high schoolers are using has doubled in the last year. >> that frequency is increasing exponentially and the trend has got zone big they now have their own convention. i went to anaheim, california, one of the first e cigarette conventions, just to kind of see what it was all about.

>> that is. >> disgusting. >> disgusting. >> let's check it out. >> it is disgusting. let's check it out. >> everywhere you look these days, people are puffing on a new alternative to conventional tobacco cigarettes. they are called electronic cigarettes and they have become hugely popular. thanks in part to a slew of glitzy television ads featuring celebrity promote their virtue. >> i am general i mccarthy. >> as a anything particular researcher i was intrigued to witness in phenomenon, firsthand. we are me at the first ecc southern california electronic cigarette convention, evening-cigs were invested in kinchina. sales have exploded in the use, $1.7 billion worth. let's go in and see what the fuss is all about. ♪ ♪ >> whoa. ♪ ♪ >> cigarettes aren't cool

anymore, believe it or not. ♪ ♪ >> with smoking you have two basic flavors, tobacco or menthol. with this, you know, there is some days you feel like you are in a sour apple mood, other days you feel like you are in a lemon mood. >> i think it's the best thing do you think for yourself in you smoke. >> after losing his father lung cancer a chinese pharmacist named hung lee invested the first electronic cigarette in 2003 as a safer alternative to cigarettes. with e-cigs there is no combustion to produce the carcinogens found in traditional significant rerbgts instead a battery powered atomizer, that heats up a mixture that turns in to vapor whe which the user inh. the habit is called va -- ping. >> when i was smoking i woke up and couldn't breathe.

>> there are major differences in the experiences, for one, e-cigs don't have the heat of congress visional cigarettes. but those who have convert today e-cigs say the health benefits are worth t including the potential to wean yourself off nicotine. >> how much second hands do you like? >> i started out at 24-milligrams. >> wow. >> yeah, so pretty hard at first. and then right now i am just like six to zero. >> customize the amount of nicotine you want is especially easy with reusable e-cigarettes known at mods, mods are not only refillable, but often feature visible voltage batteries. >> i can customize the amount of draw if the colder hit, warmer hit. as well as that's just one piece of the puzzle. there is like hundreds and hundreds of variations that you can make. >> the liquid in the e-cigarette can contain anything from concentrations of nicotine from zero to 25 or 26-milligrams, and

sweet things called juices which give the e-cigarettes their fruity flavor. here is the controversy, critics are concerned that these attractive fruity flavors could help young people using e-significants transition in traditional cigarettes. >> we have one lunn flavors, we are the yogurt lands of e-cigarettes. >> it actually smells like pizza. >> it smells like pizza. >> i would eat this. for me because move background my main concern is right now is there a top limit to the concentration of nicotine that you can put in? >> right now there is not. you have the choice right now to go and buy nicotine online and mix your own juice. >> we tends to regulate that in this country, we don't like people making their own moonshine in hair bathtubs. >> correct. >> so this is something that the fda is going to step in and influence? >> the fda will regulate. and we are prepared for that. >> but so far the fda has not

set forth any regulations for the manufacture, sale or marketing of e-cigarettes. in the meantime, there is a wild west vibe to the industry and a growing movement of passionate vapors. like 73-year-old karen lee. >> i am never going back to cigarettes. i smoked for 55 years. and i got mad and i didn't like what it cost, i bought a kit in february of 2011 and i haven't had cigarette since the day i began it. >> how do you feel then about the proposed fda regulations that are coming out? >> i think they stink. >> why? >> because they are going to condemn people to death and they are going drive people right back to cigarettes that are already saming and living a healthier lifestyle. >> but healthier doesn't necessarily mean healthy. proponents like to say because there is no burning of tobacco there are a reduction in carcinogen by-products. but they contain nicotine which

is a highly addictive substance along with other ingredient says taken together or when available rised could be toxic, researchers are just now investigating the health implications of e-cigarettes. >> i don't want to see galloping to assume this is the solution to smoking before they know its health effect effects and publih effects. >> professor sue an schick say researcher who is about to embark on an fda funded study on how e-cigarettes affect the cardiovascular system. >> i will model puff on the ground an e-cigarette and what i blowout will be what the person who is smoking it is inhaling. this is an instrument i use to measure the mass of particles that are in the air. so we are at four micro grahams per cubic meter right now. and the moment i start flowing that across the inlet to the particle -- >> 400. wow. >> yeah. now we are afternoonly spiking

because this thing won't read over 100-milligrams. so we shifts from micro grahams to over 100-milligrams. it's a lot of particles, the reason we care about particles is that breathing particles causes cardiovascular disease, causes people to die of heart attacks, plain and simple. >> there is also the potential impact of secondhand vaping and even something you could call third hand vaping. >> i know when you release nicotine in to the room it reacts with normal gases in the air to form ca carcinogens. >> so the e-cig convention just had the smoke alarm go off because of all this vape that's in the convention center. so we are evacuating the building due to vape because they set off the smoke alarms. kind of awesome. as e-cigarettes grow in popularity, there should be alarm bells ringing. warning us to look deeper and beyond, you could say the vape and mirrors.

>> a lot of your research has do with nicotine. what are the health cost that his could be going on here? and even mental health costs? >> the h expect take is because you are not getting the combustion products that they are healthier. but there has been no conclusive academic study that says that that is true. and personally i don't think it will turn out to be. >> what is your sense as far as how effective that kind of method of quitting is? >> i think it can be very effective. similar to the patch, you are able to kind of step down the amount of nicotine that you are exposed to if you are using it for smoking cessation. the thing did e-cigarettes is you still get the habit of hand to mouth and that is very difficult habit for people that are trying to quit smoke to go break. but if you are an adolescents that thinks that your friends' e how old cigarette is cool and it smells like watermelon and you want to try it. and that is something that has never smoked before. >> i was curious watching the piece, do they smell like regular cigarettes? >> heavy, sweet, very cloying

scent to the vape. >> so crystal you talked about a piece of technology that may be damaging our health. now, the next story will show you guys is an amazing piece of technology that is revolutionizing the way that we transport organize begans and it's called heart in a box. so we'll check that out next. we want to hear what you think about these stories. join the conversation by following us on twitter and at aljazerra.com.

♪ ♪ hi, guys, welcome back. now, this story i am going to show you guys was one of the most visually amazing things i have ever done. >> wow. >> look at that. this is a new way of transporting organs. it and it's going to save a lot of lives and the best part of the story, i got to touch a beating heart, so let's check it out. when it comes to heart transplants, it's always a race against time. we have all seen it on tv, when a donor heart becomes available medical teams must move quickly. the organ is removed and preserved by placing it in ice.

♪ ♪ >> the heart must arrive at the recipient's hospital within six hours. that's because overtime, the ice gradually damages the heart potentially making it unfit for transplant. but a new medical device actually keeps hearts warm and beating during transport. this could be a major breakthrough in transplant history. the first human heart transplant took place in hey hospital in south africa in 1967. since then, it's become a fairly routine procedure, with about 5,000 of them happening every year, 2,000 here in the united states. while there have been many significant advances in the techniques and technology used one aspect has pretty much remained the same. yep, getting the heart from point afte-a to point hb still-l involves a cooler and ice, here they are revolutionizing how they get transported and making

a cooler a thing of the past. at least for organ transport. the machine is called the organ care system. it can double the amount of time a heart can remain outside of a body. >> the human organ has never been kept alive outside of a human body until this machine became a clinical reality. >> dr. abbas is the head of ucla's heart and lung transplant program. >> it makes intuitive sense to a layperson to say, instead of having my heart on ice, i want it to be warm. i want it to be beating. >> for some of his patients like four-year-old sandra aguilar, this clinical trial isn't just an opportunity to test a cool new device, it's a second chance at life.

>> sandra decided to participate in the study, which is designed to compare the outcomes of patients who receive hearts through the organ care system against patients who get their hearts transported on ice. to date, 8 out of 10 available donor hearts never make it to a patient in need due to a variety of factors, including the distance between hospitals. this device could potentially expand the window of opportunity for transplants while preserving the hearts in a more optimal environments. >> we feel very comfortable or confident in our -- in the organ care system's ability to double, at least double the heart transplant volume over the next five years. >> he is the founder and ceo of trans medic medic,s the companyt came up with the system. his eureka moment came while training to be a cardiac surgeon. >> the same organ that i am supposed to be dedicating 10 or 11 years of my life to train how to protect, when it comes to

transplant, which is the pinnacle of cardiac surgery, the heart is just thrown in a plastic bag filled and scored on ice. that was the first revelation that there has to be something better. he hopes that one day learning thousand use this device will become part of the standard training for surgeons. but for now the company operates a lab where doctors practice using the organ care system with the closest thing to human hearts, pig hearts. >> hopefully threat me handle the heart. i don't know if they will trust me p i am no surgeon but i have dissect might fair share of animals with my biologist background, i will do what i can to poke it and feel a beater heart in a machine. ♪ ♪ >> once removed from the donor's body, the heart is quickly connected to the device through the aorta.

>> this is seriously just one of the most amazing things i have ever seen, you guys. there is a heart beating right in front of me. it continues to receive warm blood, as well as a proprietary formula of nutrients. >> conceivably how woulconceivad you keep a heart beat on the ground this? >> as long as you would like. >> two questions. how fragile is the heart? and two, can i touch it. >> within, it's not very fragile. two, you can it up it but it's not the norm. but by all means you can touch it, this is a training heart today. so by all means if you want to feel the ventricle pulsating, right side and left side. and you can feel the vessel itself, see the pressure in the

vessel. >> wow, it's warm. >> it's warm, it's beating. it's if you think, it's function is just as if it's in your body. >> oh, my gosh. >> it's not just hearts that can be transported in the system. a similar study is currently underway with lungs which has yielded some promising early results. >> you can see it opening and going up and down. >> so far it's cut the complication rate by more than 60% and improved the survival rate by 30 perks not content with just finding the perfect way to transport organs trans medics is also partnering up on research centers on testing cutting-edge therapies with their device. >> we can take a lung out of a patient suffering from severe that moment, a put it in the organ care system for a few hours and subject the lung to a significant level of apt bats that you cannot give to the patients because it becomes toxic. flush them out and retransplants the lung back. and we are sure that some of this will come to fruition over the next five or six years.

>> it hey sounds like science fiction, but then again, when you see this machine working you begin it to believe it. [ heart beating ] >> well, here it, i like to think that we are touching hearts across america with science. but you actually touched a beating heart. this is so cool. >> it was very cool. it was just this odd binding of animal and machine that was so futuristic yet it's part of what we have right now in our technology. >> it really seems like we leap froged from a really low tech solution to a super high connection texas with this machine. why did it take so long to get from paint-a to point-b here? >> i think one of the things is not many people were trying it or trying it in the right way. it took them 11 years to come up with this machine. i am not sure if that beating heart up your appetite at all but our next story combines food and science in a pretty unique way. >> i did a piece of molecular

gas tron me where i got to taste innovation in the kitchen and the bar. really excited to tell but it. >> we'll check that out next. >> al jazeera america is the only news channel that brings you live news at the top of every hour. >> here are the headlines at this hour. >> only on al jazeera america. >> every day, events sweep across our country. and with them, a storm of views. how can you fully understand the impact unless you've heard angles you hadn't considered? consider this... antonio mora brings you smart conversation that challenges the status quo with unexpected opinions and a fresh outlook. including yours. >> what do you think? >> stories that matter to you consider this

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♪ ♪ >> we are back here at "tech know." i am phil torres, marita, what you got? >> so i got to neat two guys, a

chef and a chemist, an unlikely pairing and their innovating in the kitchen using convention the laboratory instruments. use being liquid nitrogen and disk techniques create new, interesting and in some ways more nutritious food than what we were used to. so let's check it out. for generations, julia child taught modern kitchen techniques to millions. here she is on her pbs show demonstrating how to make beef stew. >> if you want the flavor of the be i don't knows and the beef to all presen blend themselves wite stew. >> that was then. >> oh, i can't believe how good that tastes. >> but this is now. ♪ ♪ >> ♪ ♪ >> chef joshua is on the cutting edge of modernist cuisine at the

bizarre restaurant in los angeles. and is one of many chefs experimenting with new ways to cook. >> so now here we have what is called a liquid all. >> i have never heard of it. it's such a different and unique look the way it's presented. >> liquid olives, how about stake cooked in a bath or juice made in a centrifuge. let's look at cooking two about the zero. >> the centrifuge has been around forever, it's only in the past couple of years where people are pushing the envelope. >> wow. >> there is no doubt new york has great food. but here in china town, the real culinary advances come from the lab, not the kitchen. dave arnold is a chef. kent is a chemistry professor at nyu. and together -- >> fire! >> they make stuff happen. ♪

♪ >> how does the collaboration between a chemist and a chef, how does that happen? >> i think one of the misperceptions about scientists and chefs working tote is that we always want to create something bizarre, strange, and kind of scary. ♪ ♪ >> we literally raided kept's lab and we are like we haven't used that yet. let's use it. there are chefs all over the country doing that. once we bring did in to the kitchen it's now a piece of cooking equipment. >> i am a biologist, i have spent a lot of time in a lab, but this has to be one of the coolest labs i have ever been in. >> we have all the cookbooks we need, chemistry books: liquor, food, and then a battery of things that look like scientific equipment, like immerse circulator. we are going put a light initial sear on it.

>> okay. the most important cooking ref >> referee: lukcookingrevolution moving to low temperature cooking. scientists had a way to accurately control temperatures very accurately because they needed it, right? >> yeah. >> and cooks all we ever want do is be consist spen consistent ae realized you could achieve textures you could never achieve. all these chefs are buying in to the low-temperature cooking. >> nicely done, dave. >> and a little bit of olive oil. >> i'll take this. >> that's really good. >> we are about to go in and watch dave arnold mix up a few drinks but won't be using conventional kitching utensils let's say it might be good to have a fire extinguisher nearby. >> i developed this tool, which is a modern red hot poke their functions a lot like the one in the fireplace and you put it in,

and it heats and ignites the drink. it's about 1650 degrees partner height. and a super high heat really changes the composition of some of the flavor molecules in the liquor. especially sugars. >> wow, that is really good. it's got some citrus from that real an us flavor. chefs like days are mixing up drinks in unusual ways with unlikely ingredients. this drink is made by pulverizing let us with liquid nitrogen. >> you are just muddle that go down. >> look how finally powdered it is. >> oh, wow. >> you could never get like that kind of thing muddling. >> it literally is powdered lett lettuce. >> yes. you can't even tell it's lettuce at all. >> whether or not you are cooking over a campfire or whether or not you can using liquid nitrogen it doesn't

matter. understanding the science and treating cooking like an experiment, in other words, observing what's going on and try to go take note of what's happening, and understand, that is important no matter what kind of cooking you do. and that's happening now. >> i don't know about you guys, but i am pretty much always hungry for science and hungry for food. and this is the perfect combo of it. i mean, cooking in general kind of has a history in chemistry and biochemistry and when you cook these things it changes the proteins and then that's what we are seeing and what we are smelling. so these guys are taking it to the next level. >> i am a terrible cook but i love to bake because it's a very precise, almost like a science. so i kind of like this. this makes cooking more interesting to me. turning it in to more of a precise science. >> absolutelyism think yoabsolu. i think you can really geek out in the kitchen lindsay. >> i don't know about you guys i am going my lab to grab a bite. really forward thinking topics today, guys, please check back next time on "tech know" for

more innovations and science. ♪ ♪ type deep in to these storiestories and agree bow hine scene as aljazerra.com/techknow. follow our expert contributors on twitter, facebook, google plus, and more. ♪ ♪ i'm phill torez. coming up this week on techknow. san francisco's bay bridge, an engineering marvel but this is earthquake country. >> how close are we to one of those faultlines? >> now inovation, that might change everything. >> how safe is this building? >> earthquake inovations, >> where would you wanna be if a big quake hits? >> techknow sunday 7:30 eastern on al jazeera america

check check check welcome to al jazeera america. i'm jonathan betz in new york. >> it's a race to save lives in the philippines after typhoon haiyan leaves massive death and destruction. now just hours ago the same typhoon hitting vietnam and claiming more lives. >> we are absolutely determined that this would be a good deal or there'll be no deal. >> secretary of state john kerry on the defensive after talks on iran's nuclear program end with no deal. world leaders are meeting on climate change, many wondering if anything will come from the talks. sh